What the Sea Wants by Karin L Cox

Author:Karin L Cox
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: contemporary romance, new adult romance, paranormal romance, Australian fiction, surf romance, love story surfing, surfing love story fantasy, new adult surfing romance, sports romance
Publisher: Indelible Ink Press
Published: 2016-01-29T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 29

A scale settled on Salt’s bottom lip, which was sunburned and scabbed, and jutted out as he concentrated. He didn’t flinch as another flicked up, just kept on scaling fish.

“How’s school?” he asked, not looking up. “You crook today?”

I nodded, but the truth was I’d blown off school, preferring the beach, and I was sure Salt knew it, too.

I hadn’t meant to bump into Salt today on the jetty, although I should have anticipated it. The wind made it too rough for him to take the Sea Change out, and this was one of Salt’s usual hangouts aside from Cafe Conch. He was scaling two trevally and a flathead at the aluminium cleaning station at the end of the pier. Scales kicked up into the air like small silver sprites. They caught in the grizzle of his beard—salt ‘n’ pepper, just like his hair. Just like him.

Salt was mostly calm around me, but although I’d never seen the pepper, aside from that flash of anger the day they quit the search, Ash had warned me Salt had a fiery temper if pushed. He could flay the skin off you with a tone if you did something to really piss him off. Ash had told me he’d only done that once, although he wouldn’t say what it had been about.

Salt looked up, still scaling. “You making good grades?”

I shrugged.

“Juls, love, one thing I’ve learned is you can’t let life get you down, can’t let the bad shit beat you. You let it get to you, you’re as good as dead or courting death anyway. And you’re a long time dead and only a short time livin’.”

He didn’t mention Ash, but I knew what he meant. Time to move on, Juls. Time to start living again, in the now, not in the past.

I drew in a breath. “It’s just that since Ash... I can’t concentrate. I don’t want to think about the future.”

He cut me off. “No one does. Not really. Because no one can see the future, Juls. No one knows what’s ahead. I don’t reckon anyone appreciates that feeling. Way I see it, the future’s kind of like faith, almost like heaven, you know. You can’t see it, you just have to trust it’s there, and it’s going to be better than today.”

But I couldn’t trust that. Whenever I saw the future in those damn dreams, it was never better. It was worse. Much worse. And without Ash, how could anything ever be good again, let alone better?

A scale skittered onto my arm.

“I didn’t pick you as a religious man, Salt,” I said eventually.

“Well, I don’t pretend to be the pope or anything, but a man has to find something he believes in.” He cleared his throat. “Don’t rightly know whether what I believe is in the pages of a Bible or at the bottom of a bottle, but I know I have to believe in somethin’, so I’ll take the lesser of two evils. Already learned my lesson with the other.

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